Indie Games Developer

Update #02 – Map screen changes and music

Hello again, I’ve been thinking hard about what to do for the map screen (or level select screen) because it’s current design doesn’t quite feel right.

Map screen change

This was one of the hardest decisions to make as I love level selection maps like SMB 3 has on the NES but I’ve finally decided to restrict the player down a linear path through the levels. The reason why is so that I can control the difficulty curve easier but mostly so that when a level is cleared, the player can go immediately to the next level without having to go to the map screen.

This should make the game flow faster with having less downtime and also it opens up the possibility of allowing different level sizes. I’m not 100% sure how this would play out as other platform games tend to have similarly sized levels throughout but both larger and smaller levels have felt fun to play. Before the change the player could theoretically spend longer choosing a level than playing one and this reasoning was what finally won out over my love for more freedom in a platform game’s level selection screen or map screen.

It’s not all bad however as some levels contain alternate exits which will allow different paths through the map screen. What it really boils down to is that an exit on a level will now always open up one new level eliminating the need to visit the map screen. You will of course still be able to use the map screen to replay levels.

Map screen music

You may not know but I like to create the occasional music track so I had a go at creating the map screen music for You can Double JUMP. It was more for fun than anything else but both myself and Tim N (who is currently creating the music) agree we should use these in the game. Here’s 5 versions of the music track which will be used in sequence as you progress through the main game. I hope you like them and thanks for reading: